Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

OK. You do understand that the main benchmark most states were missing was increase in cases right? That was being brought on by increased testing. Governors were realizing that the case criteria was impossible to meet if the testing increase was high. The only thing that was increasing in my state at the time of reopening was cases. Even our democratic governor knew that was a result in ramped up testing.

Again. All states are not equal.

 

Are they? Or are they reacting in real time realizing the facts have changed since they reopened? This is a fluid thing. Waiting for a decrease in cases would cost millions of jobs.

A decrease in cases aint happenin' with the growth in testing. It's basic math.

Deaths have decreased in NC every week since reopening. The 7 day average is HALF of what it was 5 weeks ago, while positive test results have increased every week. No reason to keep the state shut down for a full month when the disease is clearly not doing the same damage that it was 5 weeks ago. The number is simply up from testing...OR...the disease is losing it's potency...OR...we are better at handling and treating it. Any or all of those things make our stage reopening a good decision.

 

Agree about wording. I have edited it. My intent was not to be offensive, but to make a stark point.

 

I’d look at 7 day totals week over week. Day of week over day of week will just have too much random noise in the number.

 

I see this mentioned a lot, but do you have proof of the causative effect of having COVID positive patients spreading to others? I haven't really heard of many cases of people catching it from known positives.

My understanding is that the known positives have not been a major issue because everyone is very careful around them. It spreads easily but not THAT easily. With proper PPE and precautions it's quite minimal. It's the ones who are positive but don't know it yet that's been the major spreaders, at least these days with much more plentiful PPEs and we'll established infection control protocols.

 

I basically agree with what you said. Clearly it's not disappeared in the summer when hospitals across many parts of the country are seeing a spike in cases.

I also agree about the immunity comments. We probably do have some level of cross-immunity from other coronaviri, but clearly it's novel enough to overwhelm hospitals across the world so what does it matter? Whatever level of immunity we have against it is not enough on a societal level.

I think it's pretty clear by now that people won't get reinfected quickly, suggesting at least a period of immunity, which is not that different from other coronaviri. The question is for how long? A poster on here stated that her MIL I think had 2 separate confirmed, symptomatic bouts months apart, which I found very interesting. Research is still under way on this topic. I find it baffling that he writes that "To this day there isn’t a single antibody test that can describe all possible immunological situations...." It's only been a few months, and as an immunologist he must understand that such studies can take quite a while, right? We can't intentionally expose people to COVID, so we can't just gather a bunch of people with varying antibody levels of different types and inject them with COVID and see if they get infected.

 

1. Aren't the known positives unknown for a period of time prior to becoming "known"?
2. Hasn't their been some scuttlebutt about asymptomatic spread being less than originally thought?

 

Do you understand that death is not the only advers effect of covid? Did you know that even asymptomatic people are suffering lung damage that could last a lifetime?

https://www.newsweek.com/coronaviru...ic-patients-too-medical-examiner-says-1514084

Studies profile lung changes in asymptomatic COVID-19, viral loads in patient samples

We Still Don't Fully Understand The Label 'Asymptomatic'

Even if someone is infected by the novel coronavirus and remains asymptomatic — free of coughing, fever, fatigue and other common signs of infection, that doesn't mean the coronavirus isn't taking a toll. The virus can still be causing mild — although likely reversible — harm to their lungs.

A new paper in Nature Medicine, published June 18, documents the clinical patterns of asymptomatic infections. It finds that many of the people studied developed signs of minor lung inflammation — akin to walking pneumonia — while exhibiting no other symptoms of the coronavirus.

The study shows that being asymptomatic doesn't always mean that no damage has occurred in someone's body; follow-up studies will help researchers assess for potential long-term impacts. It also demonstrates that the intense scrutiny applied to novel coronavirus infections could shed light on how other respiratory diseases operate: Asymptomatic carriers of flu or common cold viruses are not studied much, so it's unclear whether the documented inflammation is a typical immune response or specific to the novel coronavirus.

 

There actually is a smidge of truth to this. Hospitals get slight additional funds if the Covid patient is uninsured or on Medicare.

 

Hospitalizations and deaths are the numbers to look at as well as % positive of tests. Now the % positive does change based on testing locations. The numbers admitted to hospitals for non covid, childbirth, car crash, injury, etc, are very telling.

I believe there are several studies showing home spread or close quarters work/ partying environments (meat packing ex) are the key spreading indicators. Publix, not so much.

ymmv

 

If it's not political, why are you repeating right-wing talking points that inaccurately trash New York's handling of the virus? Why did you not provide any evidence to support your claim? Why would you use hyperbole to make a point, when it's generally a poor tactic? As to your claim . . .
Staff Spread Coronavirus at New York Nursing Homes, Study Says

Why is North Carolina on the rise, esp. in comparison with New York, which faced much greater threat from international travelers?

 

so, they claim it was the staff at nursing homes in ny, not the transfered in sick patients that caused all the deaths?spin, spin, spin. lets not blame cuomo

 

gee, the health officials who were responsible for the mandate to place sick patients in nursing homes have determined it was staff, not their mandate that caused the deaths, wow, imagine that

 

nixon would be proud

 

You having fun talking to yourself?

 

C'mon Davis. If I had political motivations, I would jump on the rise in cases and blame our democratic governor.

Look...At...the...deaths.

NC has cut their 7 day death rate in half and has been down every week from previous since we reopened. We are also testing at a much higher rate. We are also nowhere near hospital crisis mode here.
Our case increase is very much due to increased testing and yes some is due to reopening. We all knew that would contribute.

But our reopening was the right thing because we:
Flattened our curve.
Improved treatment.
Have a very effective contact tracing system.
Over 5 weeks since reopening and deaths continue to fall.
Have great University hospital systems at Duke and Chapel Hill that can support the load.

All states are not equal. THAT is the point I was making to her.

Reopening is not leading to a spike in death or an overload of our health system here in NC.
No one has had to send Navy hospital ships here.

New York had to go down. Good Lord, they were one half of the problem for several weeks (NYC metro).
There was basically nowhere to go but down. As for international travelers, do not discount the Research Triangle Area of Raleigh/Durham. It has a boatload of international travel due to it's economic structure.
RDU 9and CLT are both very busy international airports with CLT being the 11th busiest in the US.

As for the nursing homes...Way to much smoke to that fire.

This could all change in an instant. This thing is crazy fluid. But at the moment, we 100% should be reopened in phase two...and probably soon, phase three.

 

The answer to #1 is yes, but we're talking about sending known positives to nursing homes right?

As for #2 we don't really know, and I'm also not referring exclusively to asymptomatic patients. Frankly our contact tracing efforts are abysmal, so Idk if we can ever answer that question. What I do know is that for basically all of the patients I see, they either have no idea where they could've caught it or they caught it from someone (e.g. family member) who has no idea where he/she caught it.

This suggests to me that most transmission is from people who are either asymptomatic or just don't give AF, at least on first glance.

 

you have engaged some on this board, i just want intelligent conversation.

 

Found this graph of total US deaths versus 2019 interesting. We currently have 113k excess deaths between March 15 and June 6. It seems that excess deaths + differential in flu/accident - differential in suicide may be the only way to truly get to number of deaths related to covid.

What Is the Real Coronavirus Death Toll in Each State?



Nationwide, at least 113,800 more people have died than usual between March 15 and June 6. That number is more than 21,200 higher than the official count of coronavirus deaths for that period. Higher-than-normal death rates are now widespread across the country; of the states with reliable data, only five show numbers that look similar to recent years.
...……………………….
All of these numbers are likely to be a substantial undercount of the complete death toll, since death counting takes time and many states are weeks or months behind in reporting.

But comparing recent totals of deaths from all causes can provide a more complete picture of the pandemic’s impact than tracking only deaths of people with confirmed diagnoses. Epidemiologists refer to fatalities in the gap between the observed and normal numbers of deaths as “excess deaths.”
…………………………….
Through June 6, excess deaths in the parts of the United States with sufficient data were about 23 percent higher than the official coronavirus fatality count. If this pattern holds for the rest of the country, it would put the current death toll at more than 157,000 people